_Just Ready, price 3s. 6d._ A Pinchbeck Goddess -------------- LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Cottage Folk ------------------------------------------------------------------------ New Six-Shilling Novels On the Face of the Waters By F. A. Steel The Spoils of Poynton By Henry James The Man of Straw By Edwin Pugh Illumination By Harold Frederic McLeod of the Camerons By M. Hamilton Life the Accuser By Author of “A Superfluous Woman” Andria By Percy White Below the Salt By C. E. Raimond A Court Intrigue By Basil Thomson Chun Ti-kung By Claude A. Rees London: WM. HEINEMANN Cottage Folk By Mrs. Comyns Carr London William Heinemann 1897 _All rights reserved_ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ _CONTENTS_ _Page_ _The Hoppers_ 1 _A Retrospect_ 21 _The Bread-winner_ 45 _His Little Maid_ 89 _A Farm Tragedy_ 133 _A Broken Tryst_ 183 _An Only Son_ 201 _A Woman’s Wager_ 225 _A Ne’er-do-weel_ 251 THE HOPPERS THE HOPPERS A dull red sun had just set amid purple storm-clouds behind the Sussex Downs. Nevertheless the twilight was falling softly beneath a wet west wind that had made the land full of colour and the sea full of shadow all day. From the stubble-field where the “hoppers” were lighting their camp-fires, one could just see the sea through a dip in the land beneath the hill where the old farm stood among the ash-trees. Against the privet hedge that hemmed the road, a girl leaned with her back to the marsh-land that spread westward from the hollow between the hills. The half-picked hop-gardens were to right of her, and, to left, the stubble-field where her comrades were laughing and chattering around the water-budge that had been drawn up in its midst. The girl’s head lay black upon the sunset, but she was not of a dark complexion—her hair was light brown, and her skin was only tanned from exposure, an exposure to which she had not, perhaps, always been used, for the shape that showed beneath her thin cotton dress was slenderer than that of most field-workers.